Southern Legitimacy Statement: Carl “Papa” Palmer of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia, lives in University Place, Washington. He is retired from the military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) enjoying life as Papa to his grand descendants and being a Franciscan Hospice volunteer. Carl is a Pushcart Prize, Best of…
This month features poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, memoirs and more writing goodness than you can shake a stick at. My dad used to say that– “more than you can shake a stick at” — I wonder if that’s a common phrase. Bob was born in 1915 and I find…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve lived all of my life south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I come from Bandy, which is located in southwest Virginia. I was six when my family moved to Hampton Roads. My dad escaped a life in the coal mines to work as a pipefitter at the…
My Southern Legitimacy originates with water. In 1963, my father decided to take the family South not West because the water in LA upset his digestion. My eldest sister always regretted the choice but I revealed growing up on the coast of central Florida. I loved wandering through the palmetto…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Sometime before 1630, Richard Willam Silvester got off a ship and set up a farm at the edge of the Dismal Swamp, He also built a house in the area around Norfolk, Virginia. About a hundred years later, Johannes Setzer left Heidelberg and ended up in Catawba…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Vance, Alabama, once a no-name town, now home to the Mercedes plant where everyone at one time worked or longed to work. I attended the University of Alabama and now live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I’ve gone from living among the trees…
Southern legitimacy statement: Appalachian born and raised, I grew up in the foothills of Georgia on stories of ghosts, graveyards, and granny witches. Although I left those mountains years ago for the suburbs of Atlanta, I still hear them call to me — a reminder where I’ll always belong. The…
My Southern Legitimacy Statement is as follows: I was born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees from William Carey University. Right now, though, I am a school administrator in Bangkok, Thailand and have been in English education for 20 years. I write as…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up south of the airport. It wasn’t something I led with back then. Taking the bus into town was like traveling to another, more deliberate country. Truth is, pretty much everyone here talks true north, but chooses to live hugging the US/Canada border. A national…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: If everyone is south of somewhere then I suppose I am legitimate, because I was born and raised in the wilds of South Jersey. Also my mother’s father is from Kentucky. nevervision There was such a party in the ante times,if only it had happenedOh how they…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: were I not in fact and in deed a native Southerner, I would not have cultivated my appreciation for the anachronistic, the ancient, the antique, the archaic, and the atavistic across my life and career. Although I have located to a western longitude in recent years, my…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born into the same economic class as Job’s turkey in eastern Tennessee, and grew up into a neighborhood of lowlifes, wastrels, and questionable IQs. I managed to get myself educated and to a certain extent, literate. I teach and write in the Smokies. Tippycanoe: Swamped…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a southerner by way of my husband and having lived in the small North Carolina town where he was raised for more years than I can count. Have you ever eaten Liver Mush? Add Liver Mush to your diet and you will be southern in…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from Virginia, lived in NYC for 25 years and North Jersey for 6, but do not like it. I miss Norfolk, which is sinking under the sea. I am as lonely as an Atlantean. Still Life I go out. I don’t remember how I got…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from a little place called Harts in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. In Harts, we’re taught to speak with an accent that makes even other Southerns go “Where are you from?!” These days I live in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. The Daughter I…
Southern Legitimacy Statement Southern Legitimacy Statement : I went to college in Delaware (not the south) but anyone south of Glasboro, NY, thought they were–and the accents were thick. In my travels, my drives south, I realized that the south was calm and quiet—the way it should be. For that,…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: We repainted our front porch ceiling last fall and it’s haint blue, the proper southern tone of sky blue so prevalent in old houses around here. Sherwin Williams has a paint color named “porch ceiling blue” in honor of such occasions. We’ve got a “Haint Blue” story…
A head of Shaanxi Writers Association is developing a residency program for Shaanxi Writers Association. He plans to invite a few American artists (poets and writers) to have a residency at Shaanxi Writers Association. A requirement is that the artists should write something about Shaanxi Province after the residency. They…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My friend Sam told if I’m tellin the truth I can wander around a little but if I’m puttin out a stretcher I better stick to the straight and narrow and repeat it exact. So I’m stickin to the truth, mostly. 1. I am The Bard of…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in the stench of the Gulf Coast refineries, raised in trailerhomes and white trash apartment complexes. My daddy got the calling to be a preacher but my momma didn’t get the calling to be a preacher’s wife, so she made him quit. Heart-Shaped Rock…
SOUTHERN LEGITIMACY STATEMENT I’ve lived in Louisiana for a handful of years, and I’m now working on a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at LSU. In my time here, I’ve tried many different gas stations’ boudin (they always have the BEST boudin. My favorite: Nonc Kev’s in Rayne); done too…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: . I was born and raised for twenty-one years in a little town of less than 2,000 people known as Vancleave, Mississippi. There wasn’t ever much to do there growing up if you weren’t a fan of hunting and fishing, so I became rather introverted and focused…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Norfolk, Virginia and grew up in nearby Virginia Beach. Spent lots of time in Gloucester VA where my mom grew up. Summers almost always involved a two-week trip to the Blue Ridge. If you want to go further back, I recently traced a…
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family is from Texarkana, Tx: my great-greats, greats, grands, mother and sister. I was born in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed, “nowhere Zen New Jersey” and grow up working of my step-father’s azelea and rhododendron nursury. At 91, my grandfather still holds court in Texarkana…